My research focuses on how our perceptual representations change with their attentional status.

 

I began using fMRI in graduate school; my dissertation used standard glm-based fMRI analysis to assess the influence of cognitive training on older adults’ recruitment of the neural systems that support the distribution of attention through the visual field (Scalf et al., 2007B). During my postdoctoral work supervised by Dr. Diane Beck, I employed fMRI to investigate the consequences of inhibitory local interactions among adjacent visual representations on attention’s ability to modulate them. This work required more detailed analysis of local regions of interest in the visual cortex and depended heavily on our ability to precisely map the retinotopy of the visual field (Scalf & Beck, 2010; Scalf et al., 2011). In two ongoing projects, we use ultra-high spatial resolution to precisely identify the differential consequences of attention on locally interacting representations of attended and non-attended stimuli. During my postdoctoral work with Dr. René Marois, I extracted the time course of the fMRI signal to demonstrate that peak attentional enhancement of a visual representation may be delayed by as much as a second if that item is preceded closely in time (50 ms) by a previous attended item (Scalf et al., 2011). In an ongoing project, I am using time-resolved fMRI to examine the timing with which attention acts on representations in visual cortex.

 

 

Education
2004 Ph.D. Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Dissertation: Age-Related Changes in the Plasticity of Neural Regions that control the Functional Field of View. Thesis Advisor: Arthur Kramer, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

 

2001 A.M. Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Thesis: Double Take: Dividing Target Items between the Hemispheres reduced the Attentional Blink. Thesis Advisor: Marie Banich, University of Colorado at Boulder

1997 M.M. Vocal Performance, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
1994 B.M. (High Honors) Vocal Performance, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

 

 

Recent Teaching (2010-2015)
Undergraduate Courses:

Introduction to Cognitive and Biological Psychology
Sensation and Perception
Biological Psychology
The Psychology of Attention